
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I make no bones about it: The Traveller RPG and it's primary setting, The Third Imperium, is one of my favorite places to take my imagination and has been since the early '80s. As a young child, I always wondered who the creator of the game, Marc Miller, was. As an adult, I've had a chance to meet him, game at this table, and really get to know him in a different way than just being a star-struck 12 year old fanboy. Marc is not just a creative genius, he is a gentleman and a kind, benevolent person, politically active in calling out racism and prejudice, just a general all-around good human being.
Back in 2023, after a very long conversation about politics and gaming (I'll spare you all the details), I bought this book from him at the gamehole convention. Of course, I asked him to sign it. He was very excited about the premise, wherein the main narrator has his consciousness loaded into a "wafer" that allows his personality and experiences to be plugged into a host body. He acts as a spokesperson who speaks as if the Emperor or the Empress (depending on when the narrator has been activated) and makes the most difficult decisions, often sacrificing thousands or even millions to save millions or billions. He is the one who makes the difficult decisions, acting, in ways, as a sort of god with the fate of the (known) universe in his hands. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. And these are not decisions that are made lightly. There is a pathos to the power, with some degree of regret and the haunting of the ghosts of the past that one might expect in such a situation.
But the central conceit of the book allows a broad view of a large universe. It is a rather brilliant mechanism, and one that requires a delicate balance between the vast and the personal.
In what could be a sanitized, clinical exposition on the setting of the Traveller RPG, Marc Miller takes a different tack, posing questions about what one would do if one had uninhibited authority, including the ongoing questions about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The humanity here is never lost, with all the attendant good, evil, and indifference that this infers.
I don't have time to go into details of Miller's Traveller universe. Suffice it to say, it's complex, but does not bury itself under details. There are nuances in the book that I had not expected from the source materials of the original game. For instance, there is the "problem" of the Zhodani, a human race that has embraced the use of psionics to the point where honesty is the only policy that makes sense in their culture. It is often compared to a pure communist system (Marc confirmed this to me directly in a conversation we had once). But here, there is a textured cultural take on a small sliver of Zhodani society showing both the diversity that is possible in a society where there are no lies and all thoughts are transparent, while simultaneously showing the impossibility of such a society understanding a culture that dissembles, deceives, and lies (i.e., the rest of Humaniti).
I'm glad I'm familiar with the Traveller universe. Yes, I could read this without it and still understand what's happening, but having been steeped in the lore for over 40 years now, I have a much clearer understanding of the impact of the events being portrayed here. But this should not stop the reader who has never played the game. The novel stands on its own feet. But if you'd like to know more, to engage in the actual ongoing creation of the setting, there's always the roleplaying game. Such is the creative magic of RPGs!
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